The average house in Birmingham now costs more than six times the typical salary - the biggest gap since 2007.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that properties in Birmingham sold for an average of £170,275 in 2018.
In comparison, a full time worker in the city was taking home a yearly salary of £27,954 on average last year.
It means that houses in Birmingham are now 6.1 times average earnings, making them less affordable than they’ve been in the last 10 years.
Our own analysis has also revealed that in some smaller neighbourhoods of Birmingham, houses can be as much as 10 times as high as the average income.
Use our postcode widget to find hyper-local figures on housing affordability for your area:
Nationally, a typical home in England now costs a staggering eight times the annual earnings of the average full-time worker.
And for workers on a lower income, the gap between average house prices and wages is even more dramatic at 11 times.
Homeless charity Shelter say decades of failure to build enough homes have led to average house prices rocketing by 268% in the last 20 years (from £65,000 in 1998 to £239,000 in 2018) while average annual earnings grew by just 69% (from £17,709 to £29,872).
So it’s hardly surprising that the number of private renters has nearly doubled over the same time period, from 10% to nearly 20% of all households, as homeownership has slipped further out of reach.
"Owning a home is an all-but-impossible dream for millions"
Polly Neate, chief executive at Shelter, said: “Today’s figures leave us in no doubt that owning a home is an all-but-impossible dream for millions of working families.
“Combined with the dire lack of social homes, this has left huge numbers of people with no choice but to rent privately.
“It cannot be right that so many families, especially those on lower incomes, now face a lifetime in deeply unstable private renting, where they’ll have to pay well over the odds to keep a roof over their head.
“More families desperately need the option of social housing, and they need it now. To make this a reality, the government must back our call for 3.1 million more social homes over the next 20 years.
“Only by doing this will we solve our housing crisis, and finally give people the chance of a truly stable home.”
House prices vs earnings 2018
Local authority // Average house price // Average earnings // Ratio
Birmingham // £170,275 // £27,954 // 6.1
England // £239,000 // £29,869 // 8.00
